Forever a Phantom
by Pseudinymous
Summary: Danny Fenton's life is turned upside down when he attempts to fix his parents' new invention; the Fenton Ghost Portal. It turns out, however, that playing with highly powerful electric contraptions is actually quite dangerous. Now with no choice in the matter, Danny must attempt to live out life as a ghost, while his parents desperately search for a cure. [AU]
1. That Which Probably Doesn't Exist

**Author's Note:  
**It's me! I'm back! Uni was giving me a bit of a rough time and unfortunately required more attention than I wanted to give it, and then my novel started begging me to write more of it... and... well, fanfic took a back seat, basically.

I've been wanting to rewrite this and take it in a _completely _different direction for a _long _time. It was 2007 when I first began it, and I must have dropped it somewhere in 2008. To be honest, I was quite plotless. But this time, I have a direction, and indeed, that elusive thing called a 'plan'.

Sit back kids. This was the longest fanfic I've ever written (albeit, it was never completed), and that's not changing. My summer project, indeed, is to finish this monstrosity and entertain a few people along the way. That would be nice. :) Anyhow, so it shall commence!

**Blanket Disclaimer of Doom:  
**The Box Ghost commands, with the power entrusted in him by all things cardboard and square, that Pseudinymous does _not _own the rights to Danny Phantom! *cough-if-she-did-she-never-would-have-fired-Steve-Marmel,-for-instance-cough*

* * *

**Forever a Phantom**  
A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **1** ~  
- _That Which Probably Doesn't Exist_ -

* * *

Uncertainty was trickling through Danny Fenton's veins, an icy chill steadily encompassing him. He looked up at the monstrous machine his parents had both invented and assembled, swallowed, and tried not to turn green; now wasn't a moment for fear. Even if that fear was making him weary and faint.

"Sam... are you sure about this?" Danny managed, sliding his thumb along the smooth metallic surface of the portal entrance. "Because I'm telling you, I'm not sure..."

"Hey, it'll be fine!" insisted Sam, giving Danny a reassuring pat on the back. "Your parents said it didn't work, anyway."

"Yeah, but technically I'm not even supposed to be _down_ here. If they catch us, well, I don't want to even think about it."

"We'll back you up. It'll be _our _fault," said Tucker, genuinely. "I mean, c'mon dude! A world full of ghosts? Aren't you even curious?"

Danny didn't reply. There was no denying that his curiosity was piqued. His nerves, on the other hand, all seemed to be telling him to run in the other direction; he had no idea how dangerous the Fenton Portal was, what might happen if he managed to turn it on, or how he was supposed to tell his parents if he did indeed get it to work...

But then, there was the factor of their sheer disappointment when they themselves couldn't fire the atrocity up. They'd worked on it so hard for so long that to have it only spark out was crushing. His mother had cried, and for days his father could only sit in a disappointed, dejected silence. Maybe they'd be angry if he started it up, but eventually... they'd probably be elated.

"Well... it could be interesting. And really cool." Danny eventually admitted. Sam looked delighted.

"That's the spirit, Danny!" she grinned, now beginning to rummage through a basket full of jumpsuits, eventually throwing one at her best friend. "Here, put this on!"

Danny was not the most coordinated of people – in fact, he could be so clumsy these days that Maddie had begun to jokingly hypothesise that Danny's last growth spurt had hit him so fast that his brain didn't have time to catch up, and that he was stuck operating what should rightly have been something shorter. Of course, this didn't by any means mean he was tall. But it did mean that he failed to react for long enough that he took a Hazmat to the face.

"I don't need one of these!" Danny protested, his voice muffled under the white and black jumpsuit as he attempted to remove it. "They look stupid, anyway."

"But your parents wear them all the time." Tucker reasoned. "They probably have their reasons, you know."

Huffing in complaint, Danny finally agreed and put it on over the top of the clothes he was already wearing. There was a Jack Fenton sticker on the front. Sam tore it off without hesitation.

"You know, ever since he got those, he's been sticking them on everything." Danny mumbled. "They're everywhere - I've been ripping them off my whole wardrobe on a weekly basis."

Tucker winced. "That's harsh, man. Your dad needs to stop branding everything."

"Tell me about it." Danny replied, as he finished tying up the laces on the jumpsuit's boots. "Although, nothing's quite as bad as having to wear _this_."

Tucker and Sam stood back and took a good look at the Hazmat, which was fairly plain as far as Hazmats went; it was all white, apart from the gloves, collar, belt and boots, which had been shaded the standard black. Danny still insisted on eyeing it distastefully, trying and failing to pull his t-shirt collar out in some small act of rebellion. It was skin-tight, however, and he did not succeed.

"Dude, it really doesn't look that bad. Imagine if the only spares that were there were your dad's? You'd be walking around in the Ghost Zone looking like an orange sack."

Danny stifled a chuckle, then seriously added "Hey, c'mon. We don't even know if that place exists. It wouldn't surprise me if it was just some bizarre figment of my folk's imaginations."

"Yeah, but imagine if it _is _real!" said Sam, with the sort of cheerful hopefulness that she didn't usually let shine through her only somewhat gothic persona. "Imagine if we could actually _meet _and _talk _to a ghost!"

"Yeah, before my parents catch it and start performing the experiments."

"Don't be silly!" said Sam. Danny raised an eyebrow.

"Have you never met mom and dad?"

"Yeah, but I reckon they'd change their minds if they actually met one." Sam declared, not quite as sure as she'd like to be. "Anyway! The portal. We've gotta figure out what went wrong, don't we?"

"Yup..." Danny agreed, turning his gaze back to the Fenton Ghost Portal. To tell the truth, he didn't know the first thing about engineering or the making of monstrous paranormal machines, so he was quite out of his depth. Nonetheless determined (and positively terrified), he began searching for things that his brain might interpret as problems. Mostly, however, everything was under wraps – apart from one small split at the back of the rim, which he could remember his parents saying was supposed to carry a charge... somehow.

"Hey... I think I found something," said Danny, carefully inspecting the damage. "Someone pass me the welder."

"Don't you need protective gear for that?!" Sam exclaimed, but Danny just shook his head.

"I'll only be using it for a moment, and these suits are all heat resistant, anyway. C'mon, look at my mom. She taught me how to use this thing."

Sam glared at him, but finally decided that her curiosity about what the portal might do if it worked was overwhelming her capacity to lecture Danny about the importance of safety goggles and heat-resistant masks. So she plucked the welder from one of the nearest benches, handed it to Danny, and backed away. A very _long_ way away.

The metal was soon joined firmly together. Danny admired his own expertise, then put the tools away.

"I guess the only thing left is to turn it on." said Tucker. "Right?"

Danny gulped. "Yep."

As the teenage son of the world's most eccentric ghost hunters stepped towards their incredible invention, he could hear his heart in his ears, and his footsteps thudding down like boulders. Every single one of his senses was on high alert; what he was doing was not only dangerous, but a step into the complete unknown. He didn't know what was going to happen, not really. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered if this was how the first astronaut felt before going into space.

"We'll be right here." Sam insisted. Tucker smiled, agreeing.

"Yeah, we have your back, man."

"Thanks guys... I'll be fine!" he managed, trying to grin. "Just you watch."

This was it. The last moment he could turn tail and run. Every part of his body told him to do exactly that – every part but his mind – and he used every ounce of his mental strength to take more steps into the portal, more steps closer to the dreaded power button. This was going to be it. No turning back and no regrets, Danny decided. Maybe that was a good philosophy.

Quickly, his hand shot out and hit the big red button. The machine surrounding him groaned to life.

_Fenton Ghost Portal version 1.39 to start up in three... two... one..._

At first, Danny could only see light, white and blinding. The surprise of it made him stumble, tripping on something that was probably important and tearing a number of wires loose at the same time. That's when the shock came; his body was fired full of heavily charged electricity and God-knows what else, shooting and sparking through his veins in huge freezing arcs. When it got right down to it, the boy didn't even realise he was screaming – the only thing his mind had the capacity to think about was the white-hot freezing pain of it all, his only wish being for it to end.

This punishment, this assault upon his body... it was far too much.

* * *

Sam and Tucker were screaming, but there was nothing anyone else could do; Jazz was the only other person in the house, but she didn't know about their little traipse into the out-of-bounds, soundproof basement. Danny was doomed to his fate inside the machine, subject to electricity of a volume surely none could survive.

And then it was all over.

Sam and Tucker stared into the swirling green mass of the portal; it was certainly working, not to mention giving off the vague and bleachy smell of chlorine. Their best friend stumbled out of it, teetering from side to side, and collapsed on the floor. Only, he didn't look like the Danny Fenton they knew; this Danny Fenton had stark white hair, fluorescent green eyes and glowed like a lamp.

"... _Danny_?" Sam whispered. "Is that... is it you?"

'Danny' made a noise somewhere between a mumble and a groan, before rolling over and staring up into the ceiling, spread eagle. Tucker and Sam jumped backwards. Finally, he managed "Man, that stung...", before continuing to stare up at the ceiling. The ceiling was nice. Danny's brain didn't need to process much when the ceiling was the only thing in sight, and right now, that could only be a good thing. Even if nothing hurt at the moment, he was _tired_, and wanted dearly to pass out.

His friends began to participate in an urgent conversation between each other, but right now Danny's mind was so far gone that all the words seemed to meld together into one big, incomprehensible lump. He mostly didn't care what they were saying, anyway. The important part was that he was alive after all of that, and really, it was quite enough for one day.

"Danny!" The sound swam into his mind like an eel, although it wasn't nearly as orderly in fashion. It was Sam's voice. "Danny, what happened to you?! Are you okay?"

"I..." said Danny, dizzily. "... Think the portal... shocked me. But I'm fine. ... I think." He paused for a moment and attempted to collect his bearings, before taking a good look at Sam's horrified-looking face. "I really _am _fine... just a bit scrambled." Danny managed. "Did the portal turn on?"

"Dude, don't worry about the portal. What about _you_?"

"What about me?" said Danny, turning his head back to Tucker. But his technology-obsessed friend was now speaking urgently to Sam again, in words so fast that Danny couldn't pick them apart; they just swirled around in his druggy mind, which would process nothing but the stress of it all. Sam was speaking urgently back, and between the two of them there was only one word he could make out.

Ghost.

"... Slow down." Danny mumbled. "Tell me what's going on. I don't wanna move..."

Tucker and Sam exchanged urgent glances, and eventually agreed on getting a mirror. Tucker bolted upstairs, two steps at a time.

"Wait... what's wrong with me? Why do you need a mirror?" Danny managed, this time quite a bit more urgently. Sam was shaking and trying to look away, but he wasn't going to let this go, not now. "Tell me what's wrong!"

"You look like a ghost, Danny!"

"I _what_?"

"I won't repeat it!"

It was only then that he even decided to make a move at all, slowly wrenching his protesting body into a standing position. He saw his hands and his feet, all of which glowed far more luminously than could ever be healthy. Part of him thought it looked like he'd been in some sort of nuclear accident in a movie, which he couldn't entirely rule out as his parents had been known to use nuclear power to keep their machines running.

"Oh my God. S-Sam? You... you don't really think that..." Danny started to shake violently, before managing to teeter over to lean on one of the benches. "I mean, it _couldn't _be... could it?" He asked, but Murphy's Law gave him his response; his arms became intangible and with a yelp, they fell straight through the cold sheet metal, something that he probably shouldn't have been able to regain his balance from but managed to anyway. He pulled them out and, with no luck in changing them back, stared at his two semi-transparent limbs. "This isn't happening. The portal didn't kill me. It-it _can't _have..."

There was a few thumping noises coming down the steps. "Sam, I found a mirror- whoa! Danny, your arms!"

"W-what about them?" asked Danny, totally transfixed.

Sam signalled to Tucker not to say anything more about it and to just bring the mirror, which was probably for the best. Danny refused to look at it for some time, however, only seeing himself for the first time when Tucker put the reflective glass straight in front of his face. His hair was white, and his eyes were glowing that terrifying ectoplasmic green...

"_No_!" Danny choked. "This isn't _right_! I'm not..."

"Well... maybe it's not permanent!" said Sam, scrambling for words. "Maybe you'll just look like this for while and then it will go away!"

"I'm _not_..." Danny continued.

"Your parents made this thing – they'll know what to do!" Tucker reassured.

"_I'm_..."

There was a loud thud; Danny had passed out, his mind utterly refusing to process anymore information. That strange electric shock had _indeed _been enough for one day, and after that, psychological shocks – particularly ones as big as this – were not in any form welcome. Sam and Tucker stared at him for a few moments, before resuming panic.

"There has to be something that can make him normal again!" cried Sam. "What about Jazz! She might know something, right?"

"Who cares? At the moment, she's our best bet!"

A few more seconds passed in terrified silence.

"Okay, let's take him!" Sam agreed. "I'll take his arms, you take his legs, okay?"

Tucker nodded solemnly, put the mirror down on one of the laboratory's many benches, and helped his best friend pick his other best friend up off the floor. Both quickly realised that only one person really needed to carry him at all; Danny was far lighter than any human being rightly should be, probably getting low enough on the weight scales to be classified as a speck of dust. Sam looked as though she was going to be sick.

"I can't believe I encouraged him... none of this would have happened if I didn't tell him to go into the portal!" Sam despaired. "What if... I mean, what if this can't be fixed? What are we going to do? What's _he _going to do?!"

Tucker didn't say a word, just as afraid of such a reality as Sam was. Instead, he focused on the current goal: getting Danny to Jazz as fast as possible. He tore open the soundproof basement door and hurried upstairs with Sam, desperate to find a solution. Deep down, however, he knew what was going on; there was no solution to "ghost", and because of a stunt that was just as largely Tucker's fault as Sam's, Danny was going to be forced to live with it.

_Thud_!

Sam yelped – her hands had slid right through Danny's wrists, which had decided by themselves that now was the perfect time to phase straight out of existence. Danny's head hit the side of the step, and with a groan he managed to wake up and pull himself away from the ground, up and up until his mind caught on that whatever was happening probably _wasn't_ physically possible.

"Wait, what's happening?!"

"Danny, you're flying!" exclaimed Sam, but caught up in a moment of utter fright, Danny struggled free from Tucker's grasp and came crashing back down to earth, tumbling to the very bottom of the stairs. He didn't curl up in pain, but instead took deep, shaky breaths. Both his friends struggled to get down the thin staircase at once.

"Dude! Are you okay?"

"Did that just even happen...?" Danny whispered, more to himself to anyone else. "Uhh... I'm fine."

Tucker and Sam said nothing – instead, Danny pulled himself to his feet and stumbled a little, before looking up the stairs to the Fenton's bedrooms and to the side, where the door to the underground ghost laboratory lurked. "Actually, that didn't hurt at all..." he muttered, darkly.

"Must be some side-effect of being a ghost." Tucker chimed in, before Sam could stop his bluntness in its tracks. Danny stared directly at him for a few moments, before regaining a grip over himself and finding some previously nonexistent determination from somewhere within.

"My folks haven't ever even _seen _a ghost before. Who's saying that this is what a ghost is, that I'm... whatever I am? Stuff isn't always what it looks like, right?"

"... Danny -" said Tucker, but before his big mouth could create an even greater psychological damage toll, it was swiftly and effectively blocked by Sam's hand.

"Doesn't matter." She said, sternly. "Let's not focus on that stuff. Let's focus on getting you checked out by someone who knows what they're doing, or how to reverse it, or something. When you were passed out, we were going to take you to Jazz-"

Danny looked as though he was about to have a heart attack – for all Sam knew, he might already have had one, but she didn't say a thing about that – and indeed probably came close to fainting, yet again. "You can't tell my sister! Besides... heck, _I _know more about the equipment down there than she does! Please, we have to wait and see if it just... I dunno, goes away on its own! If my folks think I'm a ghost...!"

"They'll what, dissect you?" Tucker almost-joked, removing his mouth from Sam's hand. "C'mon. You're their son. They're going to wanna help you, right?"

Danny became paler, and looked a little sicker. "Yeah, well... I'm not so sure. We should just go to my room and-" He was cut off quite swiftly, attention drifting to the second floor.

"Danny...? Is that... _you_?" Jazz stood at the top of the stairs, gaping at those two endlessly glowing eyes. "Little brother, what _happened_?!"


	2. A Dose of Reality

**Author's Note:**  
I have to start getting ready for work after I post this. Ye joy. But I'm glad I can say such a thing, because this time last month I didn't really have much of a job. :)

Anyhow, here's the second chapter. A word of warning: the NaNoWriMo is coming up in November (if you don't know what it is, look it up!), so I'm not going to be able to do the whole a-new-chapter-every-half-week thing. I'll try and keep updating nonetheless, and you can check out how I'm doing at the NaNo in my profile, if you're actually interested.

But it's not November yet. So until then:

* * *

**Forever a Phantom**  
A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **2 **~  
- _A Dose of Reality _-

* * *

Jasmine Fenton considered herself quite the therapist. She'd read all the books, you see; everything from depression to trauma to schizophrenia, she knew about. Maybe such things couldn't be explicitly _fixed_, but at the very least you could help a person through them. Granted, she was no professional, although Jazz was certainly of the opinion that she should be.

All of this preparation, however, couldn't prepare her mind for the sight of her little brother as a creature she had long ago declared to be a bizarre delusion of her parents. That was a ghost alright, at least according to Maddie and Jack's rather elaborate description of one. It's not like she'd set out to read it, either! Those two ghost-hunting nutheads of 'scientist' (how they'd ever gotten funding from the government, Jazz would never know) had forced every drop of information they could into her brain – at least if it had something to do with ghosts.

And now one was standing right in front of her.

"Uhh... the portal's working?" Danny attempted, shrinking backwards and wishing dearly that none of this was happening. His sister's eyes became wide, but afterwards they would slowly decline from shock to horror. If Jazz's mind was a computer, this probably would have been the point where she had a kernel panic.

"You mean to say..." Jazz began, not knowing quite how she should be articulating anything at this point, "... That you went into mom and dad's _death trap _of an experiment?!"

"... Yeah, basically."

Jazz's body gave a shiver that evolved into something more of a shudder. Finally, she dropped to the ground, out cold. Danny withheld a statement of _'Well, that solves that problem'_, despite his temptation; what he needed right now was rest, not a bombardment of questions from his sister.

Meanwhile, Sam had already bolted up the stairs to help Jazz. "I'll look after her... Tucker, get Danny into his room."

Sam was surprisingly strong for someone of her stature, and had no problems with picking Jazz straight up and carrying the queen of psychology to her bed. Out of mind and out of sight, Danny began plodding up the stairs, one at a time. Tucker stayed dutifully by his best friend's side, making sure Danny didn't do anything else completely out of the ordinary.

Of all the things Danny was grateful for right now – other than existing at all after a first-hand run-in with his parents' engineering skills – the presence of his bed was what pleased him the most. Something terrible had happened in that portal, no doubt! Danny felt as though the energy within him had been forcibly extracted in huge quantities, and the only solution was to hibernate for a good six months. The consequences of he and his friends' actions could be worked out and picked through later.

For now, he fell into the distant warm embrace of his bed sheets, and with a somewhat reassuring glance at Tucker, began to sleep like a log.

* * *

Danny's slumber was indeed a long one, and not to mention peacefully empty of dreams. If nothing else, at least his parents' electronics were good at resetting sleeping patterns.

"Danny," Someone whispered. "How do you feel, sweetie?"

Two luminescent green eyes opened up and looked around, making the person who possessed the voice fight against jumping backwards. They scanned her for a moment, before displaying an expression of recognition. "Mom?"

"Yes, it's only me." Said Maddie, softly. She reached out and stroked her baby boy's stark white hair, masterfully repressing a shiver. If there was one thing Danny was right now, it was cold. _Deathly _cold. "How do you feel?" the mother reiterated. "I'm so sorry I didn't lock up the basement. This might never have happened if I'd taken such a simple precaution."

"The accident!" remembered Danny, recollection slamming into his mind like a steel pylon. "Am I –?!"

Maddie didn't respond – Danny couldn't see her eyes when they had goggles plastered over the top of them, but the rest of her face looked positively miserable. That never boded well, and could mean nothing but bad news. Obviously, whatever the portal had done to him hadn't worn off.

"But you can fix it, right?" Danny queried. "I mean, it's not like the portal killed me or anything, right? I just-"

"Look like and have the properties of a ghost." Maddie finished, with that scarily sincere tone. "Danny, I... I'm going to tell you some things, now. Maybe they're a little frightening, but please, promise that you'll listen to me. ...Okay, sweetie?"

Danny nodded onwards, and his mother's expression became darker.

"When your father and I got home, we got your friends to explain... what you did, and what had happened to you. We also performed some tests while you were asleep, to figure out what's going on inside – all we can find is ectoplasm, Danny. There's trace amounts of other things, but we don't even know what they _are_. Most likely, they're elements found only within the Ghost Zone. You have neither a pulse nor a heartbeat, and while you were asleep... you didn't even breathe."

Danny's mother skirted around the conclusion like an ice-skater trying correct a collision course right before they smashed into someone. In other words, it was obvious what she was trying to tell him. It was what he'd suspected all along, but had vowed not to think about for the sake of his own mental health. Now how was he supposed to avoid it, when his mother – one of the only true experts on ghosts – was implying such a thing?

"But you can fix it?" Danny reiterated, a little more urgently. "I mean, I'm not _really _a ghost, the portal just did something strange to my body. Right...?!"

"... You're a ghost, Danny. I'm so sorry."

The silence hung in the same air that Danny had stopped breathing in; talking was something he couldn't stand right now. And so he sank further into the blankets of his bed, wrapping them over his head and curling himself up into a tight ball. He still glowed like a lamp, so seeing what he looked like certainly wasn't difficult. Undeniably, Danny still looked like a ghost.

For a creature like him, temperature was one of many sensations felt 'at a distance'. Nonetheless, Danny felt and appreciated the warmth coming from his mother, as she wrapped her arms around both him and his bundles of blankets. It was something small but pleasant in amongst a bucketful of terrifying consequences.

At least, it was until Danny found himself phasing out of existence.

The blankets fell through to the mattress below, Maddie's shoulders swiftly following. Danny had bigger problems, though; his accidental floating stunt when Tucker had held him by the ankles had been a complete fluke, and he wasn't anymore clued in as to how to activate it than before it'd happened. So he was slipping, through his bed and through the floor, and eventually there was a thump when he managed to become tangible again before hitting the tiles in the kitchen.

Maddie bolted down the stairs to find Danny peeling himself off the floor, albeit quite slowly. She panicked and shouted his name and whisked her baby boy into her two arms, holding tightly enough to strangle. Somehow, Danny took the opportunity to lock eyes with his mother.

"What's happening to me? Mom, I can't control any of this..."

She let him out of her death-grip, and gave him a solemn expression. "Your father and I haven't ever even seen a ghost, Danny. It's embarrassing, but... we don't have the faintest idea how to help you. The only thing I can think of is that it might respond to thought and emotion, which is really just... a stab in the dark."

"What, so I have to think 'intangible', and that might set it off?" Danny asked. His mother just shrugged. Seeing a faint possibility, Danny thought that word through the depths of his mind for quite some time, before concluding that it certainly _wasn't _the way to control such rogue abilities. When it came down to it, though, how could you control anything that _just happened_ all of its own accord?

"I know it's hard, but try not to worry about it too much, Danny." Maddie reassured. "I'm sure you'll figure it out... somehow. Anyway... now that you're up, I think your father would like to see you."

After standing in the cool, dark kitchen for some time, eventually Danny began to follow his mother into the main living area. No gloomy crevice seemed to be an issue for his glowing eyes; apparently darkness was a problem of the past for a ghost. As he looked around, he found this strange; why would ghosts need heightened sight if they resided in the Ghost Zone, which his parents had always insisted was internally lit by its own ectoplasm? Perhaps, were they wrong?

Or maybe, Danny pondered, he was thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe developing traits according to need didn't count for squat when it came to ghosts. Either way, it didn't matter. By the time he'd gotten to this thought, he was already standing before his enormous father – who was, for some reason, grinning.

"Look who we have here – Danny Fenton, the only one in the whole family who could get the Fenton Portal to work! Congratulations, son. Because of you, we can learn so much about ghosts! You're as true a Fenton as they come!"

Oh. So _that _was why he was grinning.

"Your father and I have been in a bit... of a different state of mind about this incident." Maddie admitted, rubbing her son's shoulder sympathetically. "But you have to stay strong – we _all _do. And I think you should know, that if nothing else, you've benefitted our research considerably."

Any normal teen thrust into this situation would probably have been greatly offended; they'd just died (or been turned into a ghost – the biology of the situation was something Danny was unsure about) and all their parents could think about was how they could use the situation to their advantage, without the slightest thought to the difficulty of their child's position? Danny, on the other hand, was elated. He'd never known exactly how serious his parents' ideas of dissecting a ghost were, but they took just enough (or maybe, more than enough) of the traits of mad scientists/engineers that he wasn't sure what they'd do when they found out about his predicament. This was his very special version of relief; he was rare, valuable and most importantly, their child. It was heart-warming, in that crooked way the Fenton family operated on.

They shared a hug, at least until Jack started making his child feel claustrophobic, causing Danny to become intangible and drop to the floor. A brainwave hit Danny at that very moment; he finally realised that his powers must be at least somewhat controlled by desire, or... when they weren't doing things by themselves, anyway.

"That's a neat trick you've got there, Danny!" Jack exclaimed, ever the childish one. "Now we get to figure out what else you can do! You should come down to the lab, where-"

"No," warned Maddie. "Jack, I know you're excited, but it's 1AM, and you have to remember that Danny's had an extremely traumatic incident! If you want to do tests, they can wait until the morning."

"But it _is _the morning." Jack pouted. Maddie glared at him.

"If you keep going on like this, I'll make it the _next _morning. He needs rest, dear. You saw how he slept."

It was a save that Danny greatly appreciated; he still felt as if he'd had a seizure, which meant that every single part of him was tired. Maybe it didn't need sleep, but most certainly it needed rest. Not to mention his mind – psychologically speaking, Danny still wasn't quite believing what his senses were presenting. The world of ghosts was a strange one, but it's even stranger when your first experience with it was first-hand.

Still, one of the Fenton family was still missing.

"Where's Jazz?" Danny queried, and then he remembered back. "Oh! She passed out when she saw me! Sam took care of her but-"

"Jazzy-pants is fine!" Jack reassured. "She just got a bit of a fright! Must take from your mother's side." He added. The potency of Maddie's glare was enough to make him freeze, however.

"Jazz is... angry." Admitted Maddie. "Mostly I think she's scared for you, sweetie. She saw you when you were asleep, not breathing... it hasn't been an easy night for her. She wants you to succeed in life, to do something terrific, but now that you are what you are... she doesn't think we can fix you and allow you to have that life."

"You never said anything about being able to fix this..." Danny mumbled. Maddie shook her head, her conviction increasing by being alongside her ever-optimistic husband.

"There's so much we don't know about your condition, Danny. With what happened... well, we don't know, but you might not be a standard, run-of-the-mill ghost. So _never _say never. As long as I live, I _swear _I'll try to help you."

Those words echoed in Danny's mind even after he was safely tucked into bed by his parents, just like old times. They were going to _help _him, not dissect him. Now it seemed like a silly, even outrageous idea – his mom and dad loved him, after all. They wouldn't have done something like that in any circumstance.

The problem now was that Danny wasn't sleepy. He'd slept for so long already that his mind absolutely refused to shut down again, and everything about his new condition was both frightening and a little fascinating. He didn't want to be this way, of course, but as long as he was, what was the harm in... experimenting?

A somewhat hesitant Danny decided to start with making his hand intangible; something he was sure he could do on will. Sitting up in his bed, he stared at it expectantly for a few minutes. He didn't have to think, he just needed to _want_...

Danny's hand paled in colour and quickly took on that strange translucency he'd already seen too many times in the past 24 hours. It still glowed – actually, it shimmered – in the darkened room, but it was becoming quite obvious to the boy that it would pass through anything it touched, just as much through the way it felt as the way it looked. For all intents and purposes, it didn't seem to be there. Danny took this first opportunity to stick it through the mattress of his bed, then straight through the plasterboard of his bedroom wall. Of course, he was still quite inexperienced with such an ability. Experimentation like this lead to his managing to jam fingers inside the plaster, and an embarrassing fit of panic when they wouldn't become intangible enough to come out. For two minutes Danny was utterly stuck, tugging carefully at the wall and hoping it wouldn't fall apart, until finally they obeyed him and decided to free themselves.

Exhausted, the boy slid back into the covers and fell silent.

An hour later, Danny was still awake and could hear hushed voices coming from his parents' room. They were urgent and whispery and he didn't know what they were saying, although his intuition seemed to think it was probably about him. Danny had never been much of an eavesdropper before, but... well, it involved him, didn't it? He had a right to know? Well, sort of. Nonetheless, he wanted to know. That's all that mattered.

Danny crept out of bed, careful not to untuck the sheets, and with wary contemplation managed to pass soundlessly through his bedroom's closed door. More interested than he should have been, he put his ear up to the door...

... and still couldn't hear what was being said.

Something like this was going to require special attention. Then, Danny had a brainwave – ghosts were supposed to be unseen just as much as they were supposed to be intangible, right? So why shouldn't he be able to turn himself invisible? Almost on command, his body did exactly what was asked; now, this was more like it!

Danny slid through the door, finally able to hear the sound of his parents' voices properly. They didn't even begin to notice the extra presence in their room, either.

His father looked somewhat miserable, which Danny supposed was expected. But his mother had been... crying? In all the time he'd lived, he'd never seen it happen. So Danny stayed silent and listened.

"Don't you understand, Jack? He can never go back to school – or at least he can't looking like this. And if he _does _try to become an astronaut and we _did _manage to cover everything up, imagine what they're going to find on the medical tests! Ectoplasm, ectoplasm... damnit _ectoplasm_! And what if he never grows up, and stays fourteen forever...?"

"It'll be alright, Mads. _He'll_ be alright." Jack countered, although he still grimaced. "Let's just focus on the school part first... I mean, we can always dye his hair black again. Contact lenses for the eyes..."

Maddie glowered. "Yes, but the _glow_. He'd still be so very obviously a ghost... the only thing we can do is try to cure him!"

"That could take _years. _Decades, probably," said Jack, being realistic for possibly the first time in his life. "And we don't even know where to start looking. We just have to find some way to cover it up. Either that... or we could forget about trying to cover it up and send him to school anyway."

Maddie clambered further into the arms of her husband. "But that's... it's cruel!"

"Not anymore than depriving a Fenton of his education. If we can't stop the glow, people _will _find out. That's baseline. C'mon, where's the brainy wife I married, Mads? It's hard. But it'll work... I think."

"I hope you're right..." Maddie whispered.

Well, that was _more _than enough to think about for one night, Danny concluded. He hadn't paid any mind to the idea of going to school since the accident, but now it seemed impossible not to. Deep within his stomach, he felt the beginnings of panic breaking the surface.

Danny slid back out of his parents' bedroom, unnoticed.


	3. The Somewhat Scientific Way

**Author's Note:**  
Yay, finally we have another update! Sorry for keeping you all waiting, regular updates shall be restored in the coming weeks. Also, guess what? I won the NaNoWriMo, ended up making it to 60K by the end of November. It was a great ride, but as you can probably imagine it left me pretty fatigued.

Also, thanks so much for all your kind reviews. I may not have responded this time around, but I really enjoy hearing from you. Much love. :)

Nevertheless, time to continue this! :)

* * *

**Forever a Phantom  
**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **3** ~  
_- The Somewhat Scientific Way -_

* * *

The next day's sun shone through the blinds of Danny's bedroom like a hyper-charged laser beam. As far as bad mornings came, this one was probably one of the worst; the teen peeled his eyes open and looked into the deepest darkest shadows of his room, seeking refuge in the dim. Nonetheless, the sun sparkled obtrusively. Somewhere in another room an alarm was going off, the most likely offender to have roused him in the first place.

_Thump, thump, thump. – _Danny heard. Those had to be his father's footsteps, no one else could shake the walls like that – _Thump, thump, thump. Crash! _– and that had to be his father's morning ritual of walking into the dressing table – _Thump! Thump! _

Danny began to count down from twenty-two. He knew what was coming next, and out of habit of avoiding being startled by one of Jack's '_little moments_', as he liked to call them, he'd derived this counting method as a warning. Gradually, he listed numbers until he got to one.

_SLAM!_

The door rattled on its hinges, and would've taken off part of the door frame if Danny's mother hadn't refitted it with a magnetic stripe in place of a latch long ago. This was something she had done after noticing her husband's aforementioned _little moments_, which occurred when Jack got slightly too excited about having a son that would occasionally listen to him blathering on about ghosts. The damaged plasterboard behind the doorknob, on the other hand, shook and cracked when subjected to such mistreatment, probably as it wished for the sweet embrace of death.

"Danny!" Jack boomed, surely waking up anyone in the house (and the surrounding blocks) who wasn't already sneering at the morning sunlight. "Time to come down to the lab with your old man, for experiments!"

Somehow, Danny was sure he wasn't supposed to feel this threatened. Probably, it was something to do with his father's relatively boundless enthusiasm – he shied away from it, especially with his mother's warning presence being entirely absent at this obscene hour of the morning.

"Dad... can I wake up, first?" Danny complained, staring around for both the clock radio and anything he could do to stall or escape from being left alone in the laboratory with his father. "Have breakfast, maybe...?"

"Oh... but aren't you excited? We're going to be able to find out so much ab-"

"-About ghosts." Danny finished, in a drawl. "_Please _dad. Just half an hour."

The pout was possibly the most pathetic, pity-inducing display Danny had ever seen, even from his father. Nonetheless, he wasn't changing his mind, and a great feeling of relief flooded him as soon as his father left the room and took off downstairs. Still wearing the Hazmat suit he'd been shocked in, Danny slid out of bed and stared out the window. Now it seemed to look peaceful outside, as the cool spring sunlight shone through...

The sound of a text message appearing on his phone snapped Danny out of his trance. He snatched at it impatiently, eager to find any distraction from thoughts of his father... or ghosts of any kind. Needless to say, it was Sam.

_Are you ok?_

That was it. Nothing further, and no context – which honestly was something to be glad for, it meant he could probably divert the coming conversation any way he wanted... even if he realised that it would probably be diverted straight back; Danny doubted it was a situation that was easy on his friends, either. Sam had a tendency to blame herself for stupid risks that _he'd _decided to take, regardless of the circumstances...

For a moment or two, Danny was stuck between answering or ignoring it, but kindness got the better of him.

_Fine, what about you? You coming over tonight?_

He'd leave it there for now, and decided that finding his mother was the best strategy. Of course, it was 6:30 in the morning and his mother never got up until about eight, so she'd still be in bed. It was pretty rare to see his father get up at such an insane hour, too, but sometimes his obsessions got the better of him (and, needless to say, the rest of his family). And there she was, sleeping lightly and perhaps just a little bit fitfully. Danny stared at her for a moment before he began to wake her up.

"... Danny?" she mumbled, but then her eyes flung wide open. "Danny! I – oh. You shocked me, dear..."

"Sorry," Danny replied, quickly. "Just thought you should know... Dad's already up, and all that."

"He is, is he?" Maddie asked sleepily, then she looked to her side and raised an eyebrow. "Oh... so he is. He didn't want to start without me, did he?"

"Well... kinda-"

"Ugh! Your father, sometimes!" Maddie exclaimed, before throwing the bedcovers off and getting unsteadily to her feet. "He's a sweet man, but sometimes he doesn't understand the _finesse _needed for what he's doing... I'm sorry if he tried to drag you down there without me."

"Well, he couldn't even if he wanted to, right?" Danny began, thoughtlessly. "I mean, I could just go right through him."

Maddie's expression was morose, but only momentarily. Still clad in pyjamas, she swept past her son and headed down the stairs, Danny keeping step behind her until he got to the door of his own room. Maybe he'd just check his phone...

_Maybe not... I think your mum's still kinda angry at Tucker and I._

_What if I talk to her?_ Danny keyed into his phone, desperate for even a little support from his friends. _I can't go outside, you guys have to come here or I can't see you._

As Danny sent it, he looked out at the morning sun even more eagerly. He wasn't normally an early riser, but after sleeping for most of yesterday going back to the land of nod didn't feel like an option. More than anything, he just wanted to be out there, in amongst the fresh air and light. _That_ wasn't something he normally yearned for either, but hey, you didn't miss stuff until it was lost or prohibited. For now, Danny opened his window and let the coolish breeze blow into his room, sticking his head out and looking down at the street below. It sure didn't seem quite as far down as it used to...

... No, thinking about jumping from the bedroom windowsill was _probably _a bad idea.

The spandex of his Hazmat suit still clung to his skin; apparently, he'd gone to sleep without remembering to take it off, probably as a result of being so worn down yesterday. Danny started by peeling off the silvery-white gloves, or at least he gave it a damn good shot; apparently, and quite problematically, they seemed to have become an actual part of his _actual skin_. It was flexible and felt just like the Hazmat did, but there was _no _way it was coming off.

"Great. Now I'm _stuck _with this disaster." Mumbled Danny, in distaste.

The boy sighed before making his way downstairs to whatever terrors his father had prepared the previous day. The last place he wanted to go was back in his parent's lab; facing that great swirling monolith of a machine felt like a bit more than he could handle at the moment. He was still trying to get over the shock of what it had done to him; he didn't need to stare into the infinities of what had caused that in the first place...

His father seemed to think it was a wonderful achievement. But the cost seemed a little high.

"Shh!" Maddie hissed, as he got to the kitchen. "Your father's downstairs. No need to alert him that you're here, just yet."

Danny really loved his mother, sometimes.

Pancakes of some dubious denomination were waiting on the table, ones that Danny wasn't perfectly sure were safe to eat. Maddie was smiling at him expectantly with the fruits of her labour, and he tried to smile back as he stared at the resulting atrocity. Even _he _could cook pancakes, but his mother... had some awfully strange ideas about cooking that usually didn't make their appearances known until you realised that it had been cooked in the Fenton Oven, or worse – brought to sentience in the Fenton Microwave. Danny prodded the suspicious-looking pancakes. Well, they hadn't tried to eat his fork, yet...

"Eat up, sweetie. You'll need to regather your strength after yesterday."

"I'm really not that hungry-"

"Don't be shy, I made them especially for you, dear."

"Oh. I guess that makes it all right, then..." Danny replied, feeling more than a little green. He took his plate and sat at the breakfast table, pouring maple syrup over the top until the bottle ran dry. Anything to mask the flavour...

... That didn't appear to be there. Danny had raised his fork, shuddering at the thought of putting such things into his mouth, anticipation killing him more than the pancakes would, and then... there was nothing. It tasted like _nothing_. For all intents and purposes, he might as well have been chewing rubber. At least, if rubber itself didn't have a flavour of its own.

"How are they?" Maddie quizzed, as she buzzed around the kitchen and loaded up the sink. "Do you think I should use the other Fenton Frypan, next time?"

"I... it's great as it is?" Danny attempted, slowly inching his plate away on the table. Not being able to taste made food in general only marginally more appetising than Maddie's pancakes, and in any case Danny was quite sure he wasn't hungry, for more reasons than one. If he could just get-

"That's wonderful! Make sure you eat them all up, now."

Damn, too late.

How was it that his mother, one of the most knowledgeable ghost researchers in the world, had never even thought about a ghost's ability to eat? Danny pondered this as he forced mouthful after mouthful of the stuff down his quite unwilling throat, wishing that the breakfast would just magically disappear so he wouldn't have to eat it. Still, maybe the mere fact that he could do this was a sign that, on some level, he still was human.

His mother certainly seemed happy enough.

Finishing made Danny feel like he'd ran the proverbial marathon, and he removed himself from that table thankful that he wouldn't have to think about eating again for at least a few more hours. Maddie followed him into the lounge room, where he collapsed on the couch and started flipping through the morning television shows...

"Your father will want to start as soon as he discovers you're downstairs, you know." She advised, sitting down next to him. "It's nothing to be frightened of, you know. We would never do anything that was going to hurt you."

"Your _intentions _aren't what worries me." Danny replied, sickly. "Come on, you know most of the stuff you guys make backfires spectacularly! What if something happens, and-"

"But we're not going to be using that equipment." Said Maddie, staying calm. "We just want to see what you can do."

"... That's all?"

"Yep. Then you're free to go."

"... So I don't need to worry about getting sucked into another dimension?"

Maddie laughed softly. "No, silly. You don't."

Relieved, Danny began to flick through television channels. At this time of the morning it was all little kid's programming and news and yoga, none of which Danny actually cared about. He wanted to go outside, even go to school. And he _never _thought he'd want to go to school...

"When we finish these tests, we're going to try to determine if we can send you back to school." Said Maddie suddenly, as if reading her child's mind. "We're not sure what things are going to be like from now on, though. It might be a long road..."

"But... ghosts can't go to school?" Danny questioned, wondering about the potential consequences. Perhaps he shouldn't have been thinking so much about slipping even further from his current position on the social standings, but nonetheless that's where his mind remained. "... Can they?"

"It depends on a lot of things, sweetie. You've already gone through a lot, so... just let your father and I do the worrying, okay? Whatever happens, we'll get you an education. Some way or another." Maddie gave him a hug, shivered, then stood up. "I'll keep your father distracted for half an hour or so. But then I want you to come downstairs, okay?"

Danny nodded, and she disappeared off to the basement laboratory.

Truth was, you could do a lot of things in half an hour, and the morning sun still called to him longingly. Deciding that there was nothing worth watching on television, Danny made his way upstairs again and checked his phone. No reply had yet been made, so he shrugged and placed it within the pocket of his Hazmat and flopped back onto his bed. It was only 7am, Sam would still be at home...

Was it really so bad to want to see his friend?

Hesitantly, Danny stood up again and became invisible. It was easy enough and he felt sure he could hold the ability for as long as he liked. What about flying, though? He was fairly sure he could never walk to and back from Sam's house in the allotted time, but if he could figure out how to fly properly...

Danny approached the bedroom window and flung it open, gazing down at the ground that lay beneath. The very, very _hard_, concreteground. Falling from the first story of a house might result in numerous broken bones, quite a lot of pain and plenty of embarrassment, and even though he'd done it once before Danny just couldn't seem to lift himself back into the air. Did that mean he just had to... _jump_?

The ghost boy swallowed as he continued to stare at the pavement. But he'd done this, so he'd be able to do it again. That's how things worked, right?

Now he was standing on the windowsill, using one hand to steady himself and the other to hold on so he didn't fall out. The ground started to seem _much_ further away than it did before, as if mocking him to take a chance. What was that thing in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? That if you just _miss _the ground, you'll be okay?

Frightened out of his mind, Danny let go of the windowsill.

Falling was by far the worst of it. For the first few microseconds afterwards, he almost convinced himself that the descent wasn't ever going to stop becoming a descent, and that he would sustain serious injury. Hope went out the window only for fear and adrenaline to quickly replace it, and Danny panicked more than he ever had in his entire life.

And then it all _stopped_.

There was no slamming into the ground, no bones breaking, no supreme embarrassment after dragging himself inside and having to explain to his parents what had happened. No need to take a _ghost_, of all creatures, to a _hospital_. In the fright of it all he'd accidentally become visible again, but he was floating there not really having fallen far at all. Ghost instincts were _fast_.

One singular person who happened to be traversing the streets at that time stopped and stared at Danny. The boy quickly disappeared, and the person who'd seen him gaped at that very spot and started – apparently - contemplating his own sanity. In spite of himself, Danny laughed – causing the man's sanity contemplation to morph into something more resembling horror, and he ran all the way down the street, probably cursing the Fenton family in general. Danny's family was famous the whole town over for being eccentric about ghosts, after all...

Well, maybe this wouldn't all be so bad. It was certainly _amusing_, anyway.

At least, that's what Danny thought until he tried to move around. It was awkward and forced and sort of reminded him of his first time on rollerblades, skittering around and hoping for something to grab onto. In this case, however, there was nothing to hold – not even ground. It was a scary sort of fun, where his brain told him he could fall at any moment (but not really) and control was very much lacking. If he flew quickly, for example, he could not so easily slow down. That was how the _'Amity Park – It's a Safe Place to Live!' _sign earned a rather undignified Danny-shaped imprint upon it during his experimentations.

Unbeknownst to the now extremely dazed ghost, his figure would remain immortalised in that sign for a good decade before the town finally shelled out to replace it.

Danny continued on to Sam's, wobbling far too much and sort of glad he was too invisible for anyone to see him stumble about so disgracefully. After finishing his disjointed, inelegant flight he arrived outside her bedroom window, spying her lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was quite a luxurious room inside – in fact, the whole house was huge and quite elaborate. A _mansion_, even! Surely this couldn't be the reason that she never allowed Danny and Tucker over, no matter what?

Oh well, time to break that no-matter-what right in front of her.

What Sam heard was a gentle knock on her window. Given a fright, she turned to look and what could possibly have made the noise, but quite mysteriously there was nothing there – just sky, high atop the other domestic dwellings of the surrounding inhabitants. Something cold entered her room without any physical way in, and Sam yelped when it got closer.

"Hey, it's only me!" Danny protested, but upon noticing her expression felt rather silly. "Oh right, sorry. I forgot I was invisible."

"Danny!" Sam exclaimed, falling backwards onto her bed. "Gods... you really _are _clueless, aren't you?"

Danny just grinned sheepishly. "Well... this stuff _is_ kind of new to me."

* * *

"Mr Masters, they've finally done it!"

A shadowy figure, only ever seen via a heavily-blurred intercom, grinned expectantly. "You couldn't possibly mean... the big one? The one we thought would never work?"

"Well, there was a ghost, see," said the otherwise ordinary-looking man in his otherwise ordinary-looking house. "It was right outside their house. One can only draw the conclusion that... well, they've done it."

"This is very interesting. What are your most recent readings?"

"Epsilon-6, Omicron-5."

The shadowy figure paused in thought. "Well now, that's very interesting, Simon. No strains of Omega-9?"

"Not a trace, sir. Also, there were some faint Sigma-8 readings, although they happened over a few days ago and haven't returned."

"Huh." Said Mr Masters, appearing to think deeply for a second. "Please take any opportunity you can to study their contraption further, until I have the opportunity to do so myself. If you see that ghost again – or any ghost, actually – try speaking with it. You never know what it might enlighten us to, after all."

"But-" Simon began, giving a shudder at the thought. He was, however, quickly cut off.

"This is not a difficult job, but an _important _one." Mr Masters went on. "Complete it correctly and you can expect a _handsome _raise for your troubles. Understood?"

"... Understood, sir." Said Simon, weakly. He closed his laptop and sighed – apparently the coming week was going to be long, and particularly _interesting_...

* * *

**Author's Note:  
**I don't normally leave endnotes, but this time I would like to clarify something. Sam is a terrible early-riser, yes, but I never sleep well when something's bothering me. I imagine she's the same - in fact, by now she's probably been awake all night...


End file.
